She wondered why she felt like weeping.

"He has deserved well of us," Cordelia said. "Let him be kept in the household, at least till he is properly healed. Give him good raiment and light work. And first of all a bath!"

Thereafter she did not hurry matters. Eodan limped about with a crutch, ate and drank and slept enormously, scoured pots or helped old Mopsus the gardener. He spent much time down at the stables, where he soon had the friendship of the head groom, a dour Cappadocian who was believed to have been hatched rather than born since not even a mother could have loved him. Phryne did not understand how a man of intelligence—and Eodan had a good mind in his rough way—could sit hour after hour talking about currycombs and fetlocks and spavins and whatever else there was; but so it went and, after all, divine Homer dwelt lovingly on horses.

Washed, shaved, his hair cut . . . Read More